I bet we have all had the feeling of coming across a person that makes us want to take our hats off, and this is the exact feeling I have about a woman I want to introduce to you today.
I first heard of Sally some time ago but did not fully understand what an amazing effort she has put into breeding some very special cotton breeds, a dedication that spans over several decades and strives to reach a final goal that would benefit us all; to reduce the amount of toxic textile dyes used in the world. But let's start at the beginning!
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I first heard of Sally some time ago but did not fully understand what an amazing effort she has put into breeding some very special cotton breeds, a dedication that spans over several decades and strives to reach a final goal that would benefit us all; to reduce the amount of toxic textile dyes used in the world. But let's start at the beginning!
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Many people know that cotton, one of the most commonly used textile materials today, is a fiber that grows on bushes. There are a couple of species that dominate the market, and these are heavily cultivated to maximize the desired aspect of the fiber. Some growers aim for bulk and some for length and strength in the fiber, but almost all industrial growers focus on cotton that is as white as possible which is what the clothing industry demands. The reason for this is that most of the textile material produced today is dyed, and in industrial dyeing its always easiest to work with white textiles as a standard base. Now, industrial dyeing usually means working with dyes that are harmful for both the people who work with them and the environment. A lot of work and research is going into creating sustainable dyes to be used on a larger scale, but what if we didn't have to dye our clothes at all?
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While discussing what to offer in the store this spring we came across the collection from Studio D'artisan, and we decided to have a look. These people are known for making some of Japan's finest denim garments so we weren't surprised to see that they had made yet another great collection of clothes, most of it of course saturated with our favorite dyestuff, indigo. But what really made our jaws drop was a set of pastel colored clothes that really stood out among all the blue hues! A memory popped up in the mack of my mind and I thought that this might just be a very special fibre that I heard of some time ago...
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It turns out that cotton actually comes in many different colors, even though the industry favors the white species. Hanging in front of us on the Studio D'artisan rack were jeans and t-shirts in subtle green and brown hues, and after a quick inquiry we had a folder in our hands telling us about the story behind the garments. The trail lead us back to Sally Fox, a cotton breeder who has specialized in growing species of cotton that are naturally green and brown!
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Sally has been working with cotton since the 1980's when she was a pollinator for a cotton breeder looking to develop more pest-resistant plants. At this time many white cotton breeds had been developed to have the long and strong fibers needed for industrial cotton spinning, but the colored breeds of cotton had not been given the same attention and were not suitable for spinning on an industrial scale. Sally began to pick seeds from some color-growing cotton plants, taking care to only choose the ones with the longest fibers, and re-planted them year after year. The result was two colors of cotton, green and brown, that had fibers long enough to be spun in spinning machines and Sally received Plant Variety Protection certificates for her breeds, which in a way is a patent but for plants.
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Brown cotton in one of Sally's fields
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Today Sally has a big farm in the Capay Valley area of Yolo county where she grown several different species of cotton and other organic crops such as Sonora Wheat. She also keeps Merino sheep whose fleeces have a rich variety of natural color, and on her webshop Vreseis she sells woolen and cotton yarn and clothing alongside with ground and unground wheat, and you can even buy one of her merino sheep!
Having fallen this deep into the Sally Fox rabbit hole I decided to ask her for an interview, because the more I learnt about her the more I wanted to know. Luckily for me, and you guys, she accepted!
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Each cotton seed is surrounded by a little cloud of cotton, and here is one of the green varieties at the time of harvest.
While working for a cotton breeder I came across a bag of brown cotton in his greenhouse drawer. Given to independent cotton breeders by the USDA cotton breeder as a source of natural pest and disease resistance. Yes, a burnt sienna color and a salmon color. And who knows what else, I’ve only been working on this for 3 1/2 decades, which is not very long for plant breeding. Isn’t it amazing? Me too! So, before I had the money to pay for lab testing of my cottons, I shared them with master hand spinning groups that I knew of. Those handspinners used the technique of boiling their hand spun yarn to set the twist. Some of my breeding lines the color went away with this boiling of the yarn, others the color got darker. So, since then in my breeding program, I handspin a piece of cotton from each plant selected, label it and boil it. If the color does not intensify, then it is discarded from the breeding program. I wanted to save the world from pesticide overuse and dye waste. Yes, my cotton was not supported by any USDA programs, I was never able to apply for crop loans with the USDA, banks would not loan me money. Other farmers wanted it outlawed. I had to move my research farm twice over these aggressions. Which destroyed me financially and wrecked havoc on my spirits. Respect for these plants and their history. The belief that if their fiber is improved enough to be spun on modern textile machinery (through classical breeding) that they will play an important role in improving textile sustainability in a rapidly deteriorating environment. In the early 1990’s there was rapid take up with these cottons, and they caught commercially on. We were able to scale up production and meet demand. But when the globalized textile retailers that punished the very mills who invested in dye waste clean up discarded this manufacturers, and only kept the organic white portion going ( thank goodness at least that survived!) I was left financially spent, and closed my business. I was able to hold onto my seeds, my farm and a few vehicles. I kept going at a smaller scale supporting the continuous breeding (and fresh supply of enough seeds to ramp up if the world ever wanted it again) by selling the socks and yarns other products that you can see on my website www.vreseis.com. And I kept producing a few bales of my cotton to this extraordinary spinning mill in Japan called Taishobo. They are the ones who spin the cotton in these garments. |
If you want to know more about Sally and Fox Fibres make sure to visit www.vreseis.com where you can aslo buy her cotton cloth, fibre and seeds! If you would like to hear her tell her story with her own words there is a great podcast with her that can be found here.